Umair Haque @ Daytona Sessions vol. 2 - Constructive Capitalism from Daytona Sessions on Vimeo.

Found this cool chart here - the original is by Ethan Hein.

Some artists get annoyed when “sell more t-shirts” is presented as a solution to beating pirates, which I can understand because it implies recorded music is worth nothing. But Mos Def has hit upon a way to do it which still gives the music value; the album is the t-shirt.

Def is putting out his latest album The Ecstatic as a shirt. The music tee has the album’s cover art on the front, tracklist on the back and a code for a downloadable version of the album on a tag. The medium (not to mention the S, L, XL and XXL) is the message.

I love this idea. This is a really authentic product that will mean something to fans and values everything the artist does. I’d like to see other things being used as media for digital content. A world where the format you release your work on is as bigger creative choice as the cover art is way more interesting than one where the only choices are CD/download.

More on this over at Paste.

Next week I’m speaking at the Open Video Conference here in NYC which looks set to be a fascinating event for anyone in the business of producing or consuming video. There’s some amazing people speaking, including Clay Shirky, Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing, Yochai Benkler, Jonothan Zittrain and film producer Ted Hope, plus many others talking about the idea of Open Video - the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video, which would provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online.

For more info and to register, head here.

House is a feeling.

14. Deutscher Trendtag: Social Wealth / Matt Mason: The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism from Trendbuero on Vimeo.

Two weeks ago I was invited to speak at Trendtag, an incredible event that takes place every year in Hamburg. Here’s the speech I gave. If you’ve seen me speak before you know all this already. There’s some new stuff here on The Pirate Bay Trial, Wolverine and creating virtuous circles, but the core argument of the talk remains the same. Check out the full Trendtag line up of speeches here.

By artist Olly Moss, via PSFK.

It was a good Cinco De Mayo this year. Not only did the book come out in paperback here in the US, I just received copies of the forthcoming Korean edition. I like the confused orange pirate. It’s hard out here for a ginger.

Heading to my secret base in the woods to finish what I hope is my next major project. There’s so much pirate stuff to write about right now, but if I do it, this next thing will never get finished. Back in like, a week or so. Until then please enjoy the excellent Submarines by DJ Zinc, from his new album Life Begins at Midnight, whose sound best describes the condition of my heavily caffeinated, overclocked brain until the secret project is done.